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Boiled Fish with Hollandaise Sauce

A boiled pike served with a sauce made from butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Fish with Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fish

  1. Wrap the pike in a cloth and place it over the fire to boil slowly until done, depending on the size of the fish.

Make the hollandaise

  1. In a bowl, beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper to the butter.

  3. Place the mixture in a saucepan over boiling water and beat with an egg beater until it thickens.

  4. Gradually add the boiling water while continuing to beat until the sauce reaches the consistency of stiff custard, about 5 to 7 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and set when heated, thickening the sauce into a custard-like texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the sauce.
Pike
Is the main protein, cooked gently by poaching so it stays moist and tender.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water while beating. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if they get too hot or are added too fast. Adding the hot water slowly while beating keeps the sauce smooth and emulsified as it thickens.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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